Rahul Majahan on terrorisn

[eridani]

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=40&ItemID=5142

Worse, there has been a shift in the modality of attacks after 9/11. The 9/11 attacks and previous ones by al-Qaeda, like that on the U.S.S. Cole or those on the U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, were attacks on hard targets, requiring suicide bombers and, in the case of 9/11, a highly sophisticated operation.

Furthermore, the targets were ones of obvious political significance; there was hardly a more potent symbol of American economic might and world domination than the World Trade Center. Contrary to popular depictions, at the time al-Qaeda was not simply ravening to kill any American anywhere.

That changed after the Afghanistan war, with a decision made by elders of Al-Qaeda in Thailand in January 2002 to turn more toward soft targets. The first major such attack was the November 2002 Bali nightclub bombing which killed nearly 200. Just as with the Madrid bombing, the targets had no particular political significance: while it is true that Aznar supported the war on Iraq, 90% of the Spanish people opposed it, and they were the victims of the attack.

And thus we are led to the reductio ad absurdum: more military prowess leads to more terrorist attacks, more defense of hard or politically significant targets leads to more indiscriminate attacks on soft targets, and it is simply impossible to defend all soft targets. Today the trains of Madrid. Tomorrow the New York subway?

[countmyvote4real]

1. 3000 civilians that work at a "hard" target or fly on a domestic

airline are still soft targets. I don't buy the premise that terrorism was more "responsible" before the US response in Afghanistan. However, I do agree that it will only get worse.

As for the New York subway speculation, I'm really surprised that something hasn't happened yet. No psychic awards for either of us.

This is bad analysis of an inevitable outcome.